1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to methods for locating and accessing Internet resources and to methods for linking offline advertising, directory listings, and other published information to associated Internet resources, particularly in instances where a linking element comprises a telephone number. As well, the invention relates to graphic display methods as applied in printed publications and in associated replica interactive versions of printed publications which may be made available as Internet resources or in multimedia formats, such as CD-ROM and DVD disks.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Rapid adoption of the Internet for commerce has provided an electronically connected venue of networked computers ideally suited to support many types of commerce. Fundamental Internet technology is well understood by people schooled in the field and need not be further elaborated.
To exploit the commercial opportunities of this electronic venue, businesses and other entities have created a vast networked array of publicly accessible digital resources encompassing data formats for text, graphics, audio, and video. Further, a system of standards has been established and is enforced within the network to insure homogeneity in the various electronic processes and data interchange methods that are possible between Internet-connected devices.
The hypertext linking and addressing protocol facilitates one process whereby any client computer connected to the Internet may directly request and have returned any resource that is accessible from any resource server computer within the network. One requirement of the hypertext protocol is that there is a discrete relationship between one URL and one associated available resource, and this one-to-one relationship is necessary to enforce within the totality of all computers connected to the Internet. A network of registries has been established to enforce this requirement as new resources are created. Thus, creators of new web resources such as web sites often have difficulty, as a practical matter, in finding a unique character sequence not previously assigned which can be used as sub-domain reference.
From a commercial perspective, it is generally held that the subdomain URL, or domain name selected to identify a company's top-level domain, or home page, can influence a company's level of success in its efforts to exploit the commercial opportunities afforded by the Internet. For example, URL's with fewer characters and those with memorable word associations are generally held to be more desirable because they are more apt to be remembered by prospective customers, and are easier to enter into a browser address box. Given the sheer volume of individual resources that have already been assigned URLs, creators of new web resources now typically find it is increasingly difficult to secure URLs that meet these criteria.
As well, many resource URL assignments are established via automatic programmed processes within a resource server computer without regard to semantic association with spoken language, length, or other considerations. Typically, these automatic processes result in the creation of lengthy nonsensical URL character strings with multiple pathname layers that are extremely difficult for a client user to enter into browser address field by manual means using a keyboard.
To address this problem, various methods of simplified addressing have been introduced which enable a simplified alias URL to be established and associated with an actual URL. Typically, these methods make it possible to request an internet resource on the basis of an associated telephone number, zip code, email address, and on the basis of association with other alphanumeric coding schemes.
Relative to the invention herein, Gifford (U.S. Pat. No. 5,812,776) anticipated the desirability of simplified references to web resources and teaches a method enabling client systems to locate Internet resources with simplified addressing based on telephone numbers. Gifford implies the method could be used as the basis to enable a service.
In Gifford, a client system sends a first resource request comprising a phone number element to an intermediary redirection server system holding a translation database of telephone numbers mapped to corresponding Internet resources. Using the translation database, the intermediary system uses the phone number element of the received request to determine the associated URL, which is returned to the client system and used by the client system in a second resource request to locate the actual resource.
Successful resolution of a telephone number-based resource request using the method requires the receiver system to be in receipt of a client system resource request, and that said resource request include at least one pathname element comprising a phone number, typically written as www.subdomainofreceivingserver/phonenumber. By implication this imposes a requirement that a client user system, either by client user manual entry or by some other means, must be provided with both the subdomain address of the computer which is to receive the resource request and the telephone number associated with the actual requested resource.
To satisfy this requirement, Gifford in a first method implies the possibility (see column 6, line 4) of an acceptable manual entry method whereby a client user enters a conforming URL request in a conventional browser address entry box. This first method, in turn, implies a requirement that the client user must have knowledge of the subdomain address of the receiver server that is to receive the resource request, the telephone number that is associated with the resource, and also knowledge of how to format a conforming resource request. Gifford also teaches in a preferred embodiment a second method (see column 7, line 50) which implies a modified browser which can be caused by a client user to generate a conforming URL request to a specified receiver server upon manual entry by the user of only a phone number element into a modified address entry box, though further details are not provided. Gifford also teaches a third method (see column 7, line 60) in which a client user is first provided access by a directory server to a form page, and through implication teaches that a user may enter only a phone number element into a prompt box on the form page which by some means causes a conforming URL request to be received by the designated receiver server.
This first method of Gifford, while imposing additional knowledge requirements on a client user, is nonetheless in practice preferred, as this method most conforms to current client user practice, does not require a user to download and install special browser software, and does not consistently require a client user to perform the intermediary step of locating and requesting a separate forms page. Because this method imposes the additional knowledge requirements upon the client user as discussed above, two additional requirements are therefore introduced by implication that must be satisfied to insure widespread adoption of telephone number-based Internet addressing. The first requirement is that there must be in place a simple means readily and widely available to prospective client users for determining which telephone numbers have been registered with a designated receiving server system. The second requirement being that instructions for using the service must be readily available to a prospective client user, which would include the subdomain address of the receiver server which is to receive the resource.
Printed telephone number directories are ideally suited as a means to make available this information, if properly enabled for this purpose. Telephone directory publishing is a well-developed art, and published directories are now constructed on the basis of much cumulative research on how to organize telephone-listing data for optimal utility. They are also widely distributed and available on a vast scale. In the U.S., over 600,000,000 individual copies of 7,500 different directories are distributed annually. Printed directories are virtually ubiquitous and consulted frequently by all strata of society, which is another reason these directories are ideally suited as a means to speed market acceptance for telephone-number Internet addressing.
Further, the telephone directory publishing business has become increasingly competitive due to proliferation and fragmentation of local media, and most recently by Internet competitors, such as search engines and web portal sites which are seeking to attract advertising revenue from local advertisers. As well, usage of directories by the general public is no longer growing as some people have begun to migrate to online sources. As well, the base of businesses using telephone directory advertising has also been negatively affected by business consolidation and other factors.
Telephone directory publishers therefore need and are seeking ways to enhance the value of their directories to attract advertisers, and also ways to make telephone directories more useful to the general public, thereby increasing usage. By establishing an advertising charge to designate numbers that have been registered for Internet addressing, publishers are afforded a significant new revenue opportunity that also has the advantage of making a directory more valuable to both its users and advertisers.
Particularly relevant to the invention herein, directory publishers have recently begun offering advertisers the opportunity to include their homepage URL in an expanded listing format for a fee. In directories that have implemented this format, the URL line typically appears on an additional line, typically immediately under the lines containing the traditional name, address, and telephone number information. In some directories, the URL information is displayed in a color shade that is different from the color used to display the name, address, and telephone number information. In these instances, the differentiated color is not used to designate that the telephone number itself has been established to serve as linking element to online resources in a network, but serves the purpose of attracting increased reader attention to the included URL information.
This offering has had some limited success in attracting paying advertisers, but has several drawbacks for publishers. A first drawback is that the providing of an extra line to accommodate the addition of URL listings, if provided in volume, would significantly increase publisher costs for paper, ink, printing, and shipping. A second drawback is that this method necessitates a thicker directory, which published research has shown to affect customer usage. A third drawback is that many URL's are simply too lengthy to fit within the space of a typical directory layout. Thus, many potential advertising customers are automatically excluded as sales prospects. A fourth drawback is that URL's, especially those established as homepage URLs for smaller businesses, are highly subject to frequent modification, yet directories are updated only once a year. Telephone number-based addressing may provide a means for an advertiser to reassign the URL that is associated with his telephone number at any time, so the directory is more apt to remain current. For these and other reasons, it is in the interest of publishers to open their directories to serve as directories for telephone-number based Internet addressing.
Another drawback relates to the production of facsimile versions of printed directories which publishers may make available as Internet resources, or in interactive multimedia versions, which may be distributed in CD-ROMs or by other means. In some forms of these multimedia versions, URL's which appear in the printed version of the directory are enabled as an active hypertext link, such that a user who is connected to the Internet may click on said URL link and thus call up the associated website. However, production of this multimedia using this method creates difficulties in the production process as follows. To enable the active hypertext link with a URL, a computer application is used that accesses the URL from the record database that was used to print the printed version of the directory. For each directory listing in which a URL is to be enabled as a hypertext link, a special software tool, typically custom programmed, is used to extract the URL from the database, and in conjunction with a graphics application, automatically apply a graphic to the multimedia version of the URL which in the distributed multimedia version, indicates to users that the URL information is a clickable live link. However, variability in the length of URLs complicates this process significantly because it is difficult to program this application of the graphic to be fully automatic, and typically graphics must be manually applied using other software tools. This adds significant labor expense to the process of enabling live URL links in the multimedia replica versions. By implementing telephone-number based Internet addressing in telephone directories, the telephone number may be enabled as a hypertext link, and because of higher consistency in the number of characters typically occurring in phone numbers within a directory, the multimedia production process is simplified, thus, lowering cost.
The opportunity to use telephone directories as directories for telephone-number based addressing was first tried in 2001 by the Internet Number Corporation (INC) of Tokyo, Japan, which established a service to provide telephone-based Internet addressing based on the Gifford method, and conducted a test program in conjunction with Yellow Page publisher NDC Yellow in 2001. The implementation by NDC/INC failed to win marketplace adoption and is no longer offered. This implementation was deficient in at least three ways, and it is an object of the invention herein to correct the deficiencies and teach an improved method of implementing telephone-number based Internet addressing within a printed telephone directory.
The first deficiency in the NDC/INC implementation was that although a graphic method was used within the directory to designate which numbers had been registered for telephone-number based Internet addressing, the method used was completely ineffective. A small graphic logo appeared in the same color ink as that which was used for the balance of the textual information in the number listing that was placed adjacently in proximity to the telephone number. This graphic designation method failed in practice to provide adequate visual differentiation between registered numbers and unregistered numbers. A second deficiency was that the insertion of the graphic indicia within a line of text caused variable registration and wraparound problems, which complicated the production process. A third deficiency was that NDC/INC did not provide instructions for Gifford's first method of manual entry method whereby a client user constructs a conforming URL request written as www.subdomainofreceivingserver/phonenumber in the format in a conventional browser address entry box. Thus, a prospective user either had to download special browser plug-in software, or use a provided URL of a forms page, where a phone number could be entered and sent to the telephone number-based addressing service server.
A need therefore exists for an improved method for implementing telephone number-based Internet addressing using printed telephone directories as directories, in particular in a method that would make readily available to prospective users the instructions for how to construct a conforming URL request, which would include the subdomain address of the telephone number-based addressing service receiver server which is to receive a conforming URL sent by a client system. A need also exists for an improved graphic method for designating telephone numbers within a printed directory, which numbers have been registered with a telephone-number based Internet addressing service and in associated replica multimedia versions. A need also exists to have said method such that it does not contribute to registration and wraparound problems in the printing process. A need also exists to for a method of enabling live hypertext links within multimedia replica versions of printed versions that better facilitate the use of software tools in the application of graphics in a multimedia version.